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Topic: Way off the grid... (Read 1517 times)

Here's an incredible story of a Russian family that survived in the Siberian forest for 40 years completely out of touch with any other people. It's the ultimate 'bug-out' saga. Some snippets...

Life was unbelievably hard...

You can't get closer to the edge than this...

Famine was an ever-present danger in these circumstances, and in 1961 it snowed in June. The hard frost killed everything growing in their garden, and by spring the family had been reduced to eating shoes and bark. Akulina chose to see her children fed, and that year she died of starvation. The rest of the family were saved by what they regarded as a miracle: a single grain of rye sprouted in their pea patch. The Lykovs put up a fence around the shoot and guarded it zealously night and day to keep off mice and squirrels. At harvest time, the solitary spike yielded 18 grains, and from this they painstakingly rebuilt their rye crop.

Never undestimate the human spirit. It's also important to note that this family's will to survive was anchored firmly in their faith.

99.9999% of all people most likely wouldn't survive these conditions. But they did. And there seems nothing originally out of the ordinary about them, but for the fact that they ran and hid from the murderers of the state, rather than simply submitting.

99.9999% of all people most likely wouldn't survive these conditions. But they did. And there seems nothing originally out of the ordinary about them, but for the fact that they ran and hid from the murderers of the state, rather than simply submitting.

Do I treat Glocks like I treat my lawn mowers? No, I treat them worse. I treat my defensive weapons like my fire extinguishers and smoke detector - annual maintenance and I expect them to work when needed

I suspect they would attribute their survival to their belief in a higher power. Although I am not religious, there may be something to that. I know my mother's college roommate who survived Japanese imprisonment after the fall of Singapore was convinced that it was her faith that saw her through. She was one of only 39 civilians who did not succumb to malnutrition and disease who were held in that particular camp.*

* Toward the end of the war the prisoners were held in an old brick factory. I can well remember her telling my parents how, even though they might have been blown to bits at any moment, the prisoners laid on the floor beneath the windows and cried in joy as the watched the first allied bombers fly overhead. (The guards had warned that anyone attempting to stand at a window to watch would be shot. )

It's more than the 'refusal to submit'. That was why they bugged out, but not necessarily the source of their strength. These were deeply religious people--fundamentalist Russian Orthodox Christians-- and I'm sure that their faith sustained them.

When Dmitry caught pneumonia, the geologists tried to save him...

They offered to call in a helicopter and have him evacuated to a hospital. But Dmitry, in extremis, would abandon neither his family nor the religion he had practiced all his life. "We are not allowed that," he whispered just before he died. "A man lives for howsoever God grants."